VIRTUAL
A note from the editor
This special edition of an Edovation publication will give you pause. Industry is on a trajectory that education has yet to acknowledge.
Dr. Robert Vojtek
This special edition is intended to give our readers an overview of some
new
and existing technologies that should be considered in school
Some of the technologies highlighted in this special issue, such as Second Life and other virtual environments, are intended for adults to utilize in professional conversations, professional development, simulations, and networking. Others like Minecraft are intended for elementary and middle school children. But many of the articles are intended simply to make everyone think about the future that is knocking at our door.
While we quibble about the best high stakes test for children, the knowledge and skills necessary for them to obtain or retain a job during their lifetime are radically changing. About the only thing the experts can agree upon is that their predictions chronically underestimate the speed of technological transformation.
What we really need to be aware of is that businesses and industries are advancing with robots and algorithms at an alarming rate. Education is being forced to concentrate on ways to show gains in test scores. Meanwhile amazing things are happening in the tech world and we have little time to consider their implications.
In this special issue you will discover virtual environments, virtual reality, and augmented reality. More students than you probably realize are using Minecraft at home. Isn’t it time to see how Minecraft can be used in schools to engage students and teach math, science, and history?
Augmented reality is changing the way we visualize our world. Companies are
using augmented reality applications to sell products in new and exciting ways.
Even if you are not interested in virtual or augmented reality the article on silicon collar jobs is a must read! Robots and software solutions are showing up in places you might not even suspect. White collar and blue-collar jobs will end with the onset of silicon collar jobs. Robots will take over jobs that were previously considered beyond the capacity of robots and software algorithms. Less than a decade ago driving a car was used as an example of tasks too complex for computers and algorithms to understand. No more.
Regards,
About Our Virtual Environments
There are three environments that will be discussed in this issue that relate to education as we redefines 21st century skills now that we near the 16th anniversary of Y2K.
SECOND LIFE
MINECRAFT EDU
Original Virtual Environment Kids Virtual Environment
The original Virtual Environment that is over a decade old Kids are nearly addicted to Minecraft
High Fidelity
New Possibilities
The originator starts a new company and strives for a more realistic experience
Who is coming afterYOUR job?
Robots and software solutions are becoming so sophisticated that jobs previously thought untouchable by robots or an algorithm are in danger of extinction.
Grounded In My Own History
As I look back at the events that have created my enthusiasm for leveraging the tools of technology in teaching and learning, I think of three that have been most significant.
In the 1980s I had the opportunity to work for Walt Disney Imagineering and Walt Disney Studios as a consultant. My office was above a loading dock where, at Walt Disney Imagineering animatrons were loaded in containers to be shipped back to Disney parks around the world after being repaired. Animatrons are the automated robots that are used in rides such as Pirates of the Caribbean and the Lincoln exhibit, Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln. I would routinely walk downstairs and see R2D2 or a pirate “hanging out” waiting to be boxed up and shipped back to a Disney park. It was such a magical place to work!
In the commissary during my first week I was invited, as the “new guy,” to have lunch with several Disney employees and some other guy I had not met. They waited to see if I would introduce myself to this other fellow that I did not know. After a few moments when it seemed clear that I was not going to be introduced, I stuck out my hand and introduced myself. After several awkward moments everyone started to laugh. The gentleman to my left didn’t respond. He wasn’t one of the guys… he was Abraham Lincoln, dressed in contemporary attire, a robot. With theater makeup,
he looked real.
The time I spent there was amazing. I have always been a Disney fan. As a matter of fact I was traveling home with my family from San Diego to Eureka, California when I was a young boy and we stopped in Anaheim. It was the first day that Disneyland was open to the public.
So, where am I going with this? While working at Disney I felt so alive and energized it was amazing. In contrast, there was a contract worker in my department who just didn’t understand all of the fuss. I spoke to my supervisor and he said that there are a few folks like that. Some that have worked there for years. They refer to it as having lost their “pixie dust.” That comment has stuck with me to this day. How powerful.
I see it in our schools. The little people in our elementary schools have oodles of pixie dust. Everything is a wonder. They are amazed by the simplest of things. They are daring and willing to take learning risks, try something new. But so often by the time students reach high school they have often lost all of their pixie dust. Their comment is usually something like,
MY LUNCH PARTNER
My First Influence -- photo from Disney Parks Blog
The second influence -- Autodesk
The third influence -- Disney Vacation Rentals photo
“Just tell me what I need to do to get an A.”
The second influence occurred when I was in charge of the Vocational Technical Division at College of the Redwoods, in Eureka, California. I created an Authorized AutoCAD Training Center at College of the Redwoods. The parent company Autodesk liked what I was doing and asked me to be part of a committee to inform them about effective ways to teach AutoCAD. We had quarterly meetings in Sausalito at their corporate headquarters. At one of these meetings the committee was invited to explore 3D immersive Virtual Reality as part of a potential new product.
The contraption was a helmet with goggles that held two small computer displays, one for each eye. It also includes a glove with sensors stitched into the top layer of each finger. This was all connected to a computer and a tall wire frame that was used to interpret where the goggles and glove were in 3D space. You began by orienting yourself by standing straight facing the wire frame and holding your gloved hand straight out from your body with your palm facing down. Once oriented they started one of two demos. One was a tennis demo where you hold a tennis racquet and hit a virtual tennis ball across a net. It would bounce back and you attempted to hit it back again.
The other demo was a walkthrough of a 3D house. Forming your hand into a pointing finger you would move through the house in the direction you were pointing. To stop you would tilt your hand up flat.
Without physics, you had to point up at the angle of a staircase to maneuver up the stairs. I lost my orientation and went down into the basement, pointed to the side and glided right through the wall and ended up in the bottom of the outside swimming pool.
Even with the course low resolution graphics, I was completely amazed at the possibilities.
The Third event actually combines parts of the previous two. I was at Walt Disney World and was approached by a Disney Employee if I wanted to give them feedback about a potential new attraction, Aladdin’s Magic Carpet Ride, with 3D immersive Virtual Reality. This was in the late 1990s and VR had come a long way.
This new contraption, powered by a fleet of servers, allowed you to travel through the marketplace looking for gold coins. This time the system included a helmet resembling a motorcycle helmet on steroids with built-in monitors and headphones to see and hear the environment. You would sit on a bicycle-like frame with a rectangular plate where the handlebars would have been. Moving one side up or down would move you right or left. Moving the leading edge up or down would allow you to fly up or come back down. Finally moving the plate forward moved you forward, neutral to stop, and straight back was reverse.
dor. I pushed forward to increase speed toward the vendor’s wagon and pulled up on the leading edge to fly gracefully over the top of the wagon. Well not quite. I didn’t start my assent early enough and I felt this thud as I hit the top of the wagon. There was a distinct tactile sensation as I scraped the top of the wagon continuing on my way. Maneuvering back and forth through streets and alleyways I find myself back near where I began my journey and what do I see? The same street vendor blocking the upcoming intersection. What do I do? Just as before, I pull up on the leading edge to fly gracefully over the top of the wagon. But what happens?
Let’s just say I wouldn’t make a very good pilot… I hit the top edge of the wagon again, felt the thud feedback from hitting the cart, only this time as I fly away I hear the vendor say, “stop hitting my cart.” So, now I’m on the virtual “hit list” of this street vendor! The cool part is that the game was sophisticated enough for me to feel the thud, and it was aware that it was not my first time through the area... remembering me. Pretty amazing!
These three events heavily influenced my enthusiasm for 3D environments and virtual learning. Virtual Reality in terms of headsets, goggles, and the other apparatus waned until very recently. Then, all of a sudden the concept has taken off in ways I couldn’t even imagine. During those waning years, virtual environments, like Second Life and Minecraft flourished.
I remember maneuvering through the streets when I came upon a street ven-
Meet The New Category— Silicon Collar Jobs
If you haven’t been paying attention, robots, software, and algorithms, the “manufactured aliens,”are taking over jobs and tasks that we didn’t think were vulnerable.
Robotics and software capabilities are encroaching into areas that most people would have guessed were “beyond the reach of robots.” As the capability, capacity, and processing speeds continue to increase, some believe that robots and software will take over jobs that were previously considered something only a human could do. If the predictions are correct a significant number of jobs will become extinct. This trend will significantly impact on K-12 and higher education.
While we have been debating the best way to get teachers engaged and use technology in the classroom, a whole wave of technological advancements has occurred. It was cute to paraphrase the statement, “it took 20 years to get the overhead projector out of the bowling alley and into the classroom.” The reality is that robots, software, and algorithms in cloud computing are excelling at tasks that have previously been only the prevue of humans. Tasks such, as moving boxes, creating reports and driving cars were always going to be the jobs of humans.
Robots have difficulty determining the edges of boxes, especially when multi-
ple boxes were askew. They also have difficulty determining the difference between several boxes side by side, and one large box. This is about to change as companies now report that their new robots not only recognize these edges, but they can organize and move boxes faster than a human.
Since education is so focused on incremental change, our current educational paradigm may implode when high school, bachelor degree, and graduate school graduates become unemployable.
Just a few years ago the buzz was, “we need to educate students for the 21st century,” meaning we need to teach for jobs that do not yet exist. What if the reality is that jobs we have been confident would continue, become extinct? The skills required for these new jobs can’t easily be assessed with high stakes tests. Students will need to contend with significant ambiguity and the fact that there may be multiple solutions for a given problem.
We are living in a world where every multiple choice question on an assessment puts a student one step closer to un-employability. Priority school districts that
believe using scripted lessons is an answer to closing the achievement gap may find even their graduating students lack the ability to qualify for these new jobs. This likelihood is not just for high school graduates, but also for those that are graduating from college. It is not simply about graduating from a top school any more; but rather, how prepared students are for the kind of thinking required for these new technology jobs? Wired Magazine looked at LinkedIn data to see where west coast high-tech employees graduated. They wanted to see, “if non-Stanford grads have a chance at Silicon Valley firms.” It turns out that San Jose State is a good bet just as is Stanford. In fact, “if you’re just looking at the sheer number of alumni connections to Cupertino. UC-Berkeley, UT-Austin, and Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo also appear to be Apple favorites. . . . As for the Ivy League, not one of the ancient eight makes the list for any of the tech companies under consideration.”
Microsoft unwittingly created a technological avalanche. They created a gaming device called Kinect to use with their gaming console, Xbox One, with the intent of creating a quantum leap in game navigation.
ROBOTS
Robots are not just in manufacturing any more. They can be found in some very surprising places.
MICROSOFT
The Microsoft Kinect add-on to Xbox was intended to move gaming forward, instead it set off a robot revolution.
The Kinect system, “identifies individual players through face recognition and voice recognition. A depth camera, which ‘sees’ in 3-D, creates a skeleton image of a player and a motion sensor detects their movements. Speech recognition software allows the system to understand spoken commands and gesture recognition enables the tracking of player movements.” The resulting technology, a mere $130 add-on to an Xbox system, revolutionized robotics. Although it was not the intent, Kinect created a cheap solution for robots to be able to “see,” catapulting robotics technology forward.
AGRICULTURE
In agriculture, for example, “robots can sow seeds in a farm, robots that can remove weeds, and robots are used for fertilizing crops.
In agriculture, for example, “robots that can sow seeds in a farm, robots that can remove weeds, robots are used for fertilizing crops and robots that can even pluck fruits from trees and accumulate these at one place — these were some of the finalist entries at the e-Yantra Robotics Competition 2013,” as reported in the Times of India.
The blue and white collar jobs that will become extinct create a new paradigm, the silicon collar jobs. The jobs of robots and algorithms are the new silicon collar workers.
We are living in a world where every multiple choice question on an assessment puts a student one step closer to un-employability.
Welcome to Virtual Reality
Virtual Reality has been around since the 1980s but not like you see it today. There are more than a dozen major players vying for the role of the default VR device.
Augmentarium leaders believe virtual reality and augmented reality have huge potential to improve the way doctors operate, the way police officers respond to emergencies and how soldiers navigate dangerous situations.
University of Maryland, College Park’s Virtual and Augmented Reality Laboratory officially named the Augmentarium is like many new university labs creating a space to support virtual and augmented reality functions. According to the Baltimore Business Journal, “Augmentarium leaders believe virtual reality (putting someone in a realistic or imaginary world) and augmented reality (embedding data in real life) have huge potential to improve the way doctors operate, the way police officers respond to emergencies and how soldiers navigate dangerous situations. But while a glitch or a dead pixel may be a moment of frustration for a video gamer, a mistake like that could have big consequences in these real-life applications.
SAMSUNG GEAR VR
Samsung Gear VR utilizes a smart phone and software to generate the immersive virtual reality.
Ways to The Future
University of Maryland, College Park’s Virtual and Augmented Reality Laboratory
Virtual Reality has been around for decades. The reason for a spike in enthusiasm has much to do with faster, cheaper processing which creates significant gains in quality at a lower cost. The basic elements of these products include a twin set of monitors, one for each eye, inserted into a goggle or helmet called a head mounted display (HMD); an input device such as a gaming controller, keyboard or other hand-held input device; and a sensor system to determine the location and orientation of the headset
(which way are you looking); and the location and orientation of an input device. This version of VR languished for decades as the vision was ahead of the technology. So, instead of VR that was immersive 3D, new iterations of VR such as Second Life flourished.
Second Life was and is a virtual environment that was a “window” into a world. In stead of turning your head to view a different perspective, Second Life feels like peering through a window into the virtual
OLD SCHOOL VR WAS BIG
In the early days of VR there were a number of false starts. The concepts were great but most couldn’t follow through on their promise.
world. Using the arrow keys on the keyboard, the user rotates a “camera” view of the environment. This process allows users to traverse through the environment using arrow keys to move forward backward or side-to-side. There are tools to fly and teleport from one location to another. The tools of Second Life allowed a freedom of movement that was accessible to a vast number of people.
New versions of the Second Life browser allows for immersive 3D with an Oculus Rift so that the old and new VR are merging as technology moves forward.
SecondLife (SL) Virtual Environment
SL has been around since 2003. At its peak SL had a million regular users. Designed by its first CEO, Phillip Rosedale, it continues to be the most well known grid.
Second Life (SL) turned 12 in June, 2015. While Linden Lab decided SL wasn’t a game, its users were primarily using it for social game activity like roleplaying, virtual fashion, collaborative sandbox building, and yes, virtual sex. Because there are places to teleport that you wouldn’t want students to be, Second Life is intended for ages 13 and up. Second Life has been around for so long, there are many places to visit that mimic their real world counterpart. 1929 Berlin is an example. This build goes so far as to have visitors utilize clothing of the period provided for free. There is also a sign board to measure your height and proportion. Most Second Life residents are about 120 percent larger than a typical male or female in real life. If you are appropriately proportioned, your experience in 1929 Berlin will be that much more realistic.
Second Life gives people an opportunity to interact in real time. Even if your default vantage point is from behind and slightly above the head of your avatar, there is a sense of being present. When interacting in small groups, people tend to be immersed in the moment and react to other avatars as they would a real
person. That is after all what’s behind the keyboard of the avatar anyway. It is amusing that people have a tendency to be bolder and more confrontational in email communications and chats where there is no one to look in the eyes. People say things they would never say faceto-face. Second Life interactions are more closely aligned with real world dialogue. Even though you are merely looking at an avatar there is a sense of being in a common space. Research studies conclude that having an appropriate persona, dressing like you would for a meeting in real life, and allowing you avatar gestures and gaze creates an interaction akin
to a real world conversation. According to the study, the inclusion of a relevant, expressive gaze created a significant improvement in the perceived quality of the conversation. When comparing to the participants’ sense of involvement, informed-gaze avatars barely had a significant difference from communicating via video.
Although Second Life is a virtual environment, it has its own currency the Linden ($L). This has allowed Second Life to evolve into an economy. People can buy or lease property. They can sell goods and services. Although you can maneu-
ver through Second Life for free, people tend to buy items including a new skin or real estate creating a truly personalized experience.
The avatars, which are representations of the people behind the keyboard, can take on any persona. It is not uncommon for an individual to have a number of outfits as well as body types. You are not limited to create your avatar as a reflection of your real life self. You can select an avatar that is a different race or gender as well as a completely different species.
So, on a whim you can change your body
and switch among a multitude of characters. If you are not a creator of content there is a marketplace where you can purchase an alternate “self.”
Buying real estate, the cost is based upon size and how much “stuff” you can put on the parcel. These elements are called prims, from the building block primitives. So, if you erect or purchase a house, for instance, the total number of prims that make up the house count against your allotment for the parcel. Any furnishings also count. If you add tables, chairs, carpets, and cars you need to be aware of the total capacity of prims on the parcel.
SL AVATARS
You can choose to be any type of character in Second Life, even an amalgam of old AV equipment.
DROBAK VILLAGE
There are many detailed builds in SL, some are based on real world spaces and some complete fantasy.
Realistic Characters of Second Life
There are folks that are so detail oriented their avatars fall into the realm of the Uncanny Valley with hyper realistic detail.
The concept of the uncanny valley started with animated movies where characters begin to appear more and more lifelike. Their believability reaches a point where the one percent that is “not right” suddenly becomes glaring. They are no longer almost perfect, they are unalive. As
long as they are perceived as a character we remain amazed, but when they cross the line, they miss. The Polar Express is a film where the characters fail. The characters were so close to human observers only remembered their dead eyes, according to Lawrence Weschler in his book
Uncanney Valley: Adventures in Narrative The creators of the movie Shrek realized this and changed Fiona to appear less lifelike and, in the end, more appealing as a character. In SL sophisticated photo editing tools can be used to create very realistic textures.
VIRTUAL ABILITY ISLAND
The entry to the new orientation section of Virtual Ability Island where newcomers can get started.
HISTORICAL IMAGES
A gallery of images from the Disability Rights Movement is on display at Virtual Ability Island.
The Amazing Simulations
Simulations in Second Life provide participants with a wide variety of experiences that allow for teaching and learning as well as experiences not possible in real life.
Second Life has available a variety of simulations. Some programs use virtual reality to stage scenarios that would be too costly, difficult, or dangerous to create in real life. Second Life is used, for example, in online nursing programs. The University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh uses Second Life to simulate an online nursing disaster drill. “It is a great example
employing virtual reality for training purposes.” Other programs use virtual reality systems to create virtual patient labs or to mimic classroom discussions.
When the United States changed the requirements for crossing the boarder from Canada a Second Life simulation was used to train boarder guards.
As amazing as some of the simulations are, the story of Alice Krueger founder and President of Virtual Ability, is a favorite.
The 2015 Virtual World’s Best Practices in Education (VWBPE) Thinkerer Award winner, Alice Krueger in real life (rl), Gentle Heron in Second Life (sl), epitomizes
Some programs use virtual reality to stage scenarios that would be too costly, difficult, or dangerous to create in real life.
what is possible through simulation in Second Life. The excerpt below was read by Dirk McKeenan at the closing ceremony on March 21, 2015 when the award was presented to Alice.
To combat the isolation, which commonly besets people with significant disabilities, she founded a 501(c)(3) with a mission to bring people with disabilities into online virtual worlds by providing a supporting environment in which to thrive there.
Gentle Heron first rezzed into Second Life when the Heron Sanctuary was established in 2007. Virtual Ability, Inc. officially adopted the new name in 2008 after having helped numerous people get “up and running” in Second Life. The original
WELCOME TO VIRTUAL ABILITY ISLAND
An orientation sign for newcomers to Virtual Ability Island. There are orientation signs at each module to assist new guests to the island.
group has grown in size from about 150 individuals to nearly 1,000 members, with an ever-stronger reputation within Second Life as the leading cross-disability community of support for people with real world disabilities. In 2009, Virtual Ability Island won the first Linden Prize for providing “a series of courses and resources to help people with real-world disabilities get acclimated and start using Second Life” and for its ground-breaking new resident orientation course on Virtual Ability Island.
Since that time, Virtual Ability has collaborated with researchers in disability studies and with projects to enhance the lives of people with disabilities. Virtual Ability Island has worked on such diverse projects as: Virtual programs for military amputees with the US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command; Participation in EmployAble, a Kessler Foundation grant project of the University of Hawaii’s Center on Disability Studies; and Virtual Health Adventures, led by Nova Southeastern University, College of Health Care Sciences. Alice Krueger truly epitomizes what is possible in Second Life and how one person can make a difference.
Membership includes people with physical and mental disabilities, paralysis, deafness, vision impairment, and chronic health conditions. However, it also includes non-disabled friends, relatives, and caregivers of people with disabilities, including parents of both adult and younger children with disabilities.
Virtual Education Journal
The Journal for Real World Educators
The Virtual Education Journal, affectionately referred to as VEJ has been publishing a free online journal since 2011
The Virtual Education Journal (VEJ), an online publication of Edovation and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), has been writing about virtual environments and education since 2011.
The June 2015 issue was dedicated to Minecraft, including a cover image by a student working in Minecraft, from Ivy Drive Elementary School in Bristol, Connecticut.
Each issue has a theme and accepts submissions from anyone that has information that may be valuable to educators in today’s environment. The environment in which we educate our students today has been transformed by national, state, and local policy-makers. Unfortunately most of those individuals are not educators and create policy based upon their own experience as a student.
The issue, as this publication attempts to point out, is that the 21st century skills
currently being touted, were formulated a decade before the turn of the century. The 21st century is not turning out the way it was perceived in the 1990s.
VEJ provides educators with news about what is happening in virtual environments where students and teachers are learning outside the box of the classroom. VEJ also delves into the real world where today’s students will need to find jobs.
The skills students will require in the near future are not well aligned with teaching in most of today’s schools. VEJ is poised to broaden the perspective of educators as they begin to question whether the way we have been teaching and what is being taught will be relevant for students that will be graduating in the future. As you look at the stories in this publication, it is important to think about these stories and determine how we can create the most successful students possible for our future and theirs.
The leaders of tomorrow are in our schools today. VEJ will continue to cover stories about current best practices, as well as trends that may impact our future and the children in our schools today.
VEJ also recognizes an annual Edovator of the Year. An individual that epitomized the essence of the teacher that is forward-thinking in terms of the knowledge, skills, and abilities that will serve our students well... now and in the future.
VEJ celebrates the best of Second Life with the Reader’s Choice Awards, honoring a dozen categories of innovators in SL.
We need to thank Edovation as the umbrella entity for VEJ that has contunuously supported this endeavor. Edovation has supported VEJ since its inception with an annual subscription to Issuu, the online magazine site that is the repository for all of the issues of the Virtual Education Journal.
VWBPE Virtual World’s Best Practices in Education Conference
Virtual World’s Best Practices in Education has been providing conferences in SL since 2007
Last year we had a planning meeting for the Virtual World’s Best Practices in Education (VWBPE) with participants from France, Japan, and Connecticut. Second Life uses Pacific Time. So, for a meeting at 8:30 am Second Life Time, it would be 11:30 am in Connecticut, 5:30 pm in France, and 1:30 am in Japan. The bad news is that someone is always up early or late. The good news is that everyone is in the conversation and can collaborate in real time. This is the fifth year we have been actively involved in VWBPE.
VWBPE is an annual conference that focuses on education and virtual worlds.
Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conferences provide a meaningful way for presenters to share research and their experience about the rich learning systems in virtual worlds and games. This free online conference is produced entirely by volunteers. Conference proceedings are published as the Journal of Virtual Studies by the Rockcliffe University Consortium.
The VWBPE website explains, Over 2,000 attendees representing 90 countries participate in 150-200 online presentations including theoretical research, application of best practices, virtual world tours,
hands-on workshops, discussion panels, machinima presentations, and poster exhibits. Being a formal academic is not required for participation. “Our community includes those in the education field, those that support educators through products and services, and those whose accomplishments, and creative works, have been inspired by curriculums involving digital media.”
The 2016 VWBPE Conference will be held from March 9th-12th 2016 in Second Life and other grids.
Minecraft Digital Building Blocks
Breaking news: Microsoft has purchased MinecraftEDU, the education focused version of Minecraft that is used in schools.
If you know a student in, say third grade through middle school, one of the best icebreakers is to ask about Minecraft. While in a Sam’s Club some months ago, I was looking through the books that were available, when a little boy, probably in the 5th or 6th grade came meandering through the section carrying an eight inch tall stack of books. He stopped right in front of me and commented to himself, “ooh there is another one, I didn’t see that one.” And his stack of Minecraft books grew by one.
Minecraft is a game that has potential as a learning tool in schools across many
content areas. Teachers are drawn to the game because it has educational benefits that encourage active, rather than passive, playing and can teach coding to children.
is often far past their current ability level. Children are struggling through these difficult reads and are persisting, in part, because of their desire to be better at Minecraft.
The June 2015 issue of the Virtual Education Journal was dedicated to Minecraft, including a cover image by a student working in Minecraft, from Ivy Drive Elementary School in Bristol, Connecticut.
Using these simple blocks kids (and adults) can build simple shapes or elaborate structures. There is more to the impressive engagement than creating elaborate builds. Parents and teachers are reporting that students are more deeply engaged in reading about Minecraft. The interesting aspect is that these children are reading about how to become more proficient in Minecraft. The reading level
Clive Thompson analyzed reading lev-
VEJ COVER JUNE 2015
Virtual Education Journal cover art by an elementary school student in Minecraft
els of literature related to Minecraft and found that most were at a grade 8 to 11 reading level. When the literature was provided to students in grade 6 who were struggling with reading, they successfully read the literature despite the difference in reading levels. Motivation was identified as the key factor in students reading beyond their grade level. In addition, some students have taken to writing fan fiction and blogs about Minecraft that further supports the increase in student reading and writing levels.
The June 2015 issue of the Virtual Education Journal was dedicated to Minecraft, including a cover image by a student working in Minecraft, from Ivy Drive Elementary School in Bristol, Connecticut.
At Ivy Drive, every teacher has a space for their class using MinecraftEDU, a special education iteration of Minecraft. From these classroom spaces, each student has a plot within that classroom space. Depending upon the grade level these elementary school students are responsible for populating their space with elements that leverage their math skills.
HOLOLENS MINECRAFT
Microsoft purchased Minecraft and is creating a way to “build” in your livingroom.
Two students from Ivy Drive offered to comment on their friendship and how they “play” together in Minecraft. The parents of Noah Constantine and Nathan Berube gave permission for them to comment on Minecraft for an article
published in the June 2015 issue of The Virtual Education Journal.
Noah explains, “Minecraft is changing learning forever. It is helping kids change their attitude towards school. Some kids are really into this new game. They can help each other and make things together, improving teamwork. This is something that is needed in schools. Minecraft has power. It can bring people together to create something unique. An example of that is my friend, Nathan Berube, and I play Minecraft on Xbox. We create different worlds together. We have survival worlds and creative worlds that we play on. We also play on pocket edition. I have a custom superman skin and he has a dragon skin. This is how we make Minecraft our own game. We each have different building styles and both prefer different things in Minecraft. But no matter what, we always can work together in a survival world to find resources or in a creative world making awesome buildings.”
Nathan’s take is, “Noah likes to build while I love adventuring through the worlds that I build. We both can play together and still take part in what we like most about Minecraft. Just Tuesday we built a huge castle with no entrances. You have climb the walls and go in through the roof. We built a big mansion together and a Hunger Games map with just the two of us. When playing with friends or alone there are many things you can do when on Minecraft”.
High Fidelity
Philip Rosedale’s New Company
After leaving Linden Labs Philip Rosedale wanted to make a better virtual environment that was more like a real world experience.
SMI EYE TRACKING
High Fidelity Uses SMI HMD Eye Tracking to Create Life-like VR Avatars
The founder of Second Life, Philip Rosedale has started a new venture that has a different vision. As its name might imply, High Fidelity, is part of a vision to take VR to the next level. Where Second Life functions on hundreds of thousands of Linden Lab machines, High Fidelity worlds would be distributed across the
user base. At Silicone Valley Virtual Reality (2014) Rosedale explained. “We could potentially go from 600,000 or so servers to 600 million.” If you’re on one world, you can see others in the sky and travel between them, watching blocky Minecraft-like environments resolve to detailed landscapes as you get closer. As computers advance, so will the possibilities. “The virtual worlds of the future are going to look like Pandora from Avatar. And once we can build things in those worlds, I would assert that even people
The
virtual worlds of the future
are
going to look like Pandora from Avatar. And once we can build things in those worlds,
I
would assert that even people who are passionate about VR, here, have no idea what is coming.
who are passionate about VR, here, have no idea what is coming,” he says. “We’re going to be arguing over the price of real estate in the forests of Pandora.”
High Fidelity is also concerned about audio and video quality. Audio will give a sense of place by being able to tell where a sound is coming from. Think surround sound or 3D sound. Video quality relates to resolution and latency. If you move your head too quickly, the image has to catch up. The core of the experience
SIMPLE SCENE
This is a simple scene from High Fidelity that gives a peak into the Metaverse
is something else. It is the responsiveness. It is getting nuance and gestures right. Using sophisticated motion capture techniques, you could mirror your head movement and facial expressions onto an avatar. Research studies conclude that having an appropriate persona, dressing like you would for a meeting in real
life, and allowing you avatar gestures and gaze creates an interaction akin to a real world conversation. According to one study, the inclusion of a relevant, expressive gaze created a significant improvement in the perceived quality of the conversation. When comparing to the participants’ sense of involvement, informed-gaze avatars barely had a sig-
nificant difference from communicating via video.
Using a full-body harness, you could go a step further, moving your arms and torso naturally to interact. All the while, you could be in an immersive environment that puts a Skype call to shame,” says. Ali Robertson in a Verge blog post.
HIFI IMAGE
Virtual environments provide a way for people to create fantastic worlds that can be made available for people to explore.
HIFI STORY
Playing in High Fidelity with basic primitives that allow a builder to create these amazing places.
What you thought would happen in the future...
is happening today
A 21-year-old college dropout built the virtual reality company that Facebook just bought for $2 billion.
Now, Lucky Palmer is 23 and his VR headset has just been released as a consumer product... the Oculus Rift!
When Steve Jobs launched the iPhone 4, and with it the first Retina display, he described it as having a screen with so many pixels packed closely together that they were imperceptible to the human eye.
Oculus Rift Is Now A Retail Product
Oculus Rift may be the most well known VR product but there are many companies vying for VR dominance.
The Kickstarter campaign for Oculus VR set a goal of raising $250,000 and surpassed that by raising more than $400,000 on the first day. The entire Kickstarter campaign raised $2.4 million. This feat catapulted Oculus forward and within two years Facebook bought the company for $2 billion. The social network paid $400,000 in cash plus 23.1million Facebook shares for the company, with a further $300,000,000 in incentives if it hits certain milestones in the future. This started a veritable arms race to become the first consumer virtual reality headset.
Like VR of the 1980s, early versions of the Oculus Rift Developer’s Kit created
a user experience of looking through a screen door. The resolution and refresh rate were focused on developing content and the lens/monitors would be handled separately. Apple refers to their displays as retina. The idea being that the pixels are so close together that the brain no longer sees individual pixels.
When Steve Jobs launched the iPhone 4, and with it the first Retina display, he described it as having a screen with so many pixels packed closely together that they were imperceptible to the human eye at a distance of twelve inches. He went to great lengths to explain that, because the iPhone 4’s screen packed in 300 pixels per inch, most people wouldn’t see them
at all when the phone was a foot from their eyes.
The Oculus Rift has two displays and when you take even a high-resolution display, dividing it in half often means it has pixels that are detectable by the human eye. Some companies are now thinking that having the display in front of the eyes in a headset will be a short-lived solution. Magic Leap purports, based upon patent information, to beam content directly into your eyes so that brain cannot differentiate the digital from the real.
For now, the Oculus rift allows users to explore virtual spaces as though they were actually in that place.
Virtual reality developers are primarily looking at three uses in the short run including gaming, simulations, and movies. Movies have transitioned significantly since the early days without sound. Initially movie cameras were stationary, but soon at the director’s discretion they panned from side to side. Once the movement of the cameras started, the ability of the movie to tell a story changed significantly. Today we benefit from 3D movies where the viewer can see a depth of the image that was not possible with traditional 2D movies. Additionally, we now have surround sound where the viewer can hear the direction of a sound making the experience much more engaging. The 1996 movie Dragonheart, featured Sean Connery as the voice of Draco a dragon. Clips from this movie are still used as
an example to demonstrate surround sound. As Fernby Films website explains, “Draco’s wingbeats and deep voice throb from every channel as he flies about the sky; it was the moment during which I realized just how surround sound could – and should – be used .” This newly added auditory layer can give an incredible sense of space and is sometimes referred to as 3D audio hacking your brain.
With surround sound capabilities added to an immersive visual experience it is no wonder that Oculus has created a new creative team called Oculus Story Studio. The team is tasked with utilizing VR to create a film experience unlike any other: one that completely immerses the viewer in the interactive films with its revolutionary technology.
The utilization of VR in movies will create a complex way to tell stories and view content. A virtual environment that is digital will be very different from characters in a scene. When we watch a movie or television show, the director dictates what we see and when. You hear a sound and the scene zooms in on what makes the sound. With VR the viewer may choose to meander around the scene choosing what is important and what to concentrate on.
OCULUS DEMOS
The utilization of VR in movies will create a complex way to tell stories and view content.
Robots make the best burgers
Imagine the perfect burger grilled to your specifications with all the condiments and absolutely no human interaction. Oh, yes they can be made at 360 burgers per hour.
Just as workers are making progress toward obtaining a living wage, San Francisco-based Momentum Machines unleashes a robotic device that can cook and build hamburgers, replacing all of the hamburger line cooks in a restaurant. The company claims, “An average quick service restaurant spends $135K every year on labor for the production of hamburgers. Not only does our machine eliminate nearly all of that cost, it also obviates the
associated management headaches.” Robots don’t take breaks, come in late, forget to call in at all, and most importantly don’t make workman’s comp claims.
The newly revised machine promises to utilize three grinds of meat. You may request one third bison and two thirds beef. It grills the meat to your liking before assembly. Then after the grilling process your burger is assembled to your speci-
fications. Tomatoes, lettuce, and pickles?
All are sliced only immediately before it places the slice onto your burger, giving you the “freshest burger possible.”
McDonalds is preparing to add kiosks to their restaurants after having deployed them off shore already. Chili’s Grill and Bar as well as Applebee’s are introducing kiosks and mobile ordering. The Wall Street Journal labels this as a “minimum
SLICED AFTER GRILLING
Momentum Machines device doesn’t slice your tomatoes and onions until after the burger is grilled ensuring the freshest ingredients.
You may choose among three grinds of meat. Would you like 60% pork and 40% bison? No problem, just select the ratio.
wage backfire.” Under the guise of improving the customer experience for McDonalds the move is also “a convenient way... to justify a reduction in the chain’s global workforce,” claims the Journal. It continued, “The result of their agitation will be more jobs for machines and fewer for the least skilled workers,” it claims.
The National Low Income Housing Coalition calculates in Connecticut, the Fair Market Rent (FMR) for a two-bedroom apartment is $1,263. In order to afford this level of rent and utilities — with-
out paying more than 30% of income on housing — a household must earn $4,210 monthly or $50,515 annually. This would require an earner to work 106 hours per week at minimum wage to afford the two-bedroom house. That’s 2.7 full time jobs.
The elimination of jobs because of automation is a trajectory we are already on. The Gartner Group claims software and robots will replace one third of all workers by 2025, and that includes many high-skilled jobs.
MCDONALDS KIOSK
The question becomes, is this for the benefit of the diner or a way to avoid paying workers?
What if Your Poor Writing Skills
Were Replaced by an Algorithm?
Robo writing may not be the newest discipline where algorithms are taking over jobs, but it might be an area where you didn’t notice it happen.
CHART OF PERCEPTION ABOUT STORIES WRITTEN BY SOFTWARE
Can people tell the difference between a story written by a journalist or a software algorithm?
The previous examples may seem ancillary to the issue of job loss. If a robot makes your burger or a driverless car transports you to the airport, you still have your job. They were blue collar or service jobs. This example may hit closer to home. Shall we call it a new wave of silicon collar jobs?
Jobs that are being eliminated while you were sleeping.
Teaching students to write well has been central to our educational system. Not every student will become a professional writer or journalist. But what if you could subscribe to a company that would take all of your raw business data and convert it into a clean, well-written narrative for, say, your end of the year report? Narrative Sciences claims to do just that.
The Chicago-based company began as a class project. Kristian Hammond and Larry Birnbaum taught a class at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, and Integrated Marketing Communications. The students taking the course were a combination of programmers and journalism students. One team of students created prototype software, Stats Monkey. According to Wired Magazine the software was, “designed to collect box scores and play-by-play data to spit
out credible accounts of college baseball games.”
Automated Insights, a competitor to Narrative Sciences, was used in a test between a software generated game recap and one written by a journalist. In Christer Clerwall’s paper, Enter the Robot Journalist, he found, “the text written by a journalist is assessed as being more coherent, well written, clear, less boring, and more pleasant to read. On the other hand, the text generated by software is perceived as more descriptive, more informative, more boring, but also more accurate, trustworthy, and objective. The result was essentially a tie when all factors were evaluated.
Narrative Sciences, in addition to creating news stories from vast amounts of data has a product targeting business communications. Quill is the name of their business-centric solution. The Narrative Sciences website explains, “Quill leverag-
es natural language generation software to produce content which meets your communication goals, business rules and over arching stylistic preferences, such as tone, style and formatting.” Finally, Quill automatically applies natural language to the most relevant information and assembles a narrative that is indistinguishable from a human-written one. In 2011, Kristian Hammond, the co-founder of Narrative Science, was chided into making a prediction about the number of news articles that would, in fifteen years be written by an algorithm. Hammond responded that it would be over 90 percent.
90% of news articles will be written by algorithm in 15 years.
Elon Musk stated that in two years Tesla would have the technology ready for fully automated level 4 selfdriving cars capable of driving without human interaction.
TESLA’S Progress Toward Autonomous Driving
Elon Musk is well on his way toward autonomous driving with a recent software upgrade to 2015 and newer Teslas. Look ma no hands.
Tesla has a software update that can be downloaded to existing Tesla Model S automobiles that provide several autonomous-like features. Autopilot provides the driver, or owner, since some features do not require anyone to be inside the vehicle, with several automated capabilities. The website states, “Model S is designed to keep getting better over
time. The latest software update, 7.0 allows Model S to use its unique combination of cameras, radar, ultrasonic sensors and data to automatically steer down the highway, change lanes, and adjust speed in response to traffic. Once you’ve arrived at your destination, Model S scans for a parking space and parallel parks on your command.”
This means Tesla has near autonomous mode driving. Tesla recommends a driver be in the car and ready to take the wheel at any time. The new features include Autosteer (Beta), Auto Lane Change, Automatic Emergency Steering and Side Collision Warning, and Autopark. Autosteer, “keeps the car in the current lane and engages Traffic-Aware Cruise Control to maintain the car’s speed. Using a variety of measures including steering angle, steering rate and speed to determine the appropriate operation AutoSteer assists
the driver on the road, making the driving experience easier. Tesla requires drivers to remain engaged and aware when Autosteer is enabled. Drivers must keep their hands on the steering wheel.”
When Autosteer is enabled, Auto Lane Change allows the driver to simply engage the turn signal and the car will change lanes when it senses that it is safe to do so. Automatic Emergency Steering and Side Collision Warning alerts the driver if something is detected too close to the side of the vehicle.
Autopark, as the name implies, allows the car to parallel park without engagement of the driver. Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO said, “the parking feature is a ‘baby step’ toward his eventual goal: letting drivers summon their self-driving, self-charging cars from anywhere using their phones.
I actually think, and I might be slightly optimistic on this, within two years you’ll be able to summon your car from across the country. This is the first little step in that direction.” This is important because these updates are for Teslas that are already on the road.
Tesla certainly isn’t the only car company that is working on autonomous driving vehicles. The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2015 had companies taking advantage of the shows hype. Audi unveiled its A7 driverless car in style, with the vehicle driving itself to Las Vegas all the way from San Francisco.
Mercedes touted, The new Mercedes F 015 driving itself to CES. Dubbed the F 015 Luxury in Motion, the sleek four-door automobile envisions how luxury selfdriving cars might look and feel a short 15 years in the future.
“Anyone who focuses solely on the tech-
AUTOPILOT
The Mercedes F 015 after having driven to the CES Autonomously. nology has not yet grasped how autonomous driving will change our society,” Dieter Zetsche, head of Mercedes-Benz cars, said before his keynote address at the annual event in Las Vegas. “The car is growing beyond its role as a mere means of transport, and will ultimately become a mobile living space.”
Hold on to your hats and glasses, not the steering wheel, “cause this here’s the wildest ride in the wilderness!” Make that suburbia!
TESLA DISPLAY
A sample layout of the way a Tesla owner can view navigation information.
Uber could replace every taxi cab in New York City – passengers would wait an average of 36 seconds for a ride that costs about $0.50 per mile.
9K Autonomous Uber Cars would leave zero taxis in Manhattan
Columbia University conducted a study that suggested it would take a mere 9,000 autonomous cars and Uber could replace every taxi cab in New York City.
When people think of autonomous driving cars they might have an image of some Google car being tested on a back road in Nevada. As it turns out the major car companies are all looking at autonomous cars. The technology has the capacity to completely disrupt not only the automotive business, but how we go
from one place to another. If you live in an urban area and travel less than 10,000 miles a year, it is likely more economical to ride share than to own a car right now.
There is an incredibly informative article from CBS in San Francisco by guest contributor Zack Kanter, from January 2015.
Not only is it well written there are links to the individual claims.
Google has been working on an autonomous driving car but it does not intend to manufacture the automobiles, rather it intends to license the technology. Both Google and Tesla believe that fully autonomous cars, what Musk describes as, “true autonomous driving where you could literally get in the car, go to sleep and wake up at your destination” – will be
available to the public by 2020.
Uber has a significant interest in autonomous vehicles. Uber currently gets a mere 25 percent of the fare with 75 percent going to the driver. Uber can regain the advantage if they could eliminate the driver. Specifically, Travis Kalanick, Uber CEO recently made the statement that Uber will eventually replace all of its drivers with self-driving cars.
Columbia recently conducted a study
that suggested with a mere 9,000 autonomous cars, “Uber could replace every taxi cab in New York City – passengers would wait an average of 36 seconds for a ride that costs about $0.50 per mile.”
At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, General Motors CEO Mary Barra said, “The auto industry will change more in the next 5-10 years than it has in the past 50.” During the same show, Elon Musk stated that in two years Tesla would have the technology ready for fully auto-
Billion Dollar Charlie
Flamboyant Harvard Law professor, Charles Nesson even taught a class in Second Life.
Professor Nesson was the lawyer that defended Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers case. More famously, he was cocounsel in the case against W. R. Grace and Company. The case was made into a book and later a movie, A Civil Action. Nesson, nicknamed Billion-Dollar Charlie, founded the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
If you are not familar with the center at Harvard University, it has been working for the public good in terms of protecting the freedom of the net. Founded at Harvard Law School, in 1998 by professors Jonathan Zittrain and Charlie Nesson, it is now a university-wide initiative.
This is the entity that held a course in Second Life in 2006 in a build that recreated Austin Hall, one of the iconic buildings on the law school campus.
mated level 4 self-driving cars. The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) defines Level 4 as Full Self-Driving Automation: “The vehicle is designed to perform all safety-critical driving functions and monitor roadway conditions for an entire trip. Such a design anticipates that the driver will provide destination or navigation input, but is not expected to be available for control at any time during the trip. This includes both occupied and unoccupied vehicles.”
Austin Hall as it appears on campus and as it was in 2006 in the Second Life Build
AUSTIN HALL
Google Cardboard Expeditions
Google is targeting education with something they call Expeditions, which are education oriented videos recorded in immersive 3D.
Google Cardboard is the ultimate lowcost version of VR. It is literally a cardboard fold-up with cheap plastic lenses that encases a smartphone to view stereoscopic images and video. It looks like a hand held mask similar to a snorkelling mask. A phone app splits the screen to view content in 3D.
The fold-up templates are available online so that anyone could theoretically create their own Google Cardboard by exactly reproducing the template specifications. This free availability to print the template on cardboard sheets has given rise to organizations printing their own branded versions of Cardboard. The easiest way to get Cardboard is to order a kit from Amazon or one of several manufactures. Google makes the template available on their website so if you are so inclined you can print the template and cut the cardboard yourself.
Probably the best way to visualize the Cardboard concept is that it is a 21st century version of the iconic View-Master. In an amusing twist, Mattel has given ViewMaster the first facelift in 30 years. Google and Mattel have partnered and updated the iconic View-Master for the VR generation. The original View-Master was a small hand-held device that allowed you to insert a disk with stereoscopic photographs to display an image in 3D. So it should not be a surprise that the new View-Master VR is a $29.95 device made of plastic and cradles a smartphone and works the same way as Cardboard.
Google is targeting education with something they call Expeditions, which are education oriented videos recorded in immersive 3D. This is a pilot project that is taking self-contained adventures, in the form of short videos of famous places
around the globe, to schools allowing the closest thing to a virtual field trip to occur in the classroom. They bring Google Cardboard, smart phones and a wireless network into the school and lead students through an immersive adventure to places students may never be able to go.
The teaser for Expeditions states, “Imagine visiting the bottom of the sea or the surface of Mars in an afternoon. With Expeditions, teachers can take their classes on immersive virtual journeys to bring their lessons to life… Expeditions is a virtual reality platform built for the classroom. We worked with teachers and content partners from around the world to create more than 100 engaging journeys - making it easy to immerse students in entirely new experiences.”
The availability of Cardboard centric content and the affordability of the Cardboard device still leave one element to grapple with… access to the smartphones to drive them. Google suggests that when families in your community consider trading their old smartphone in to buy a new one, they instead donate the phone to the school. The phone does not need a
CARDBOARD VIEWER
All you need to add is a smartphone and this folded cardboard cutout becomes a VR viewer.
CARDBOARD CAMERA
There is now an app that helps create panoramas with your phone to view through your Google Cardboard.
cellular account or use cellular data; rather it just needs to take advantage of the WiFi to view the content in Cardboard.
If schools can obtain the smartphones and use Cardboard in the classroom, we have the possibility of a fundamental leveling of the educational playing field where students that would never have the opportunity to travel could be immersed in virtual travel and have experiences that could closely replicate “being there.” I remember my first teaching assignment in inner city Los Angeles… I took students in my scale model club to my beach apartment in Hermosa Beach on the Strand. Three of the dozen junior high students in this group had never been to the beach, had never seen the ocean. Imagine the possibilities if they could walk through the streets of Paris with the help of an inexpensive device.
We worked with teachers and content partners from around the world to create more than 100 engaging journeys.
Google Cardboard
A Storytelling Tool
ABC News VR , New York Times, and a gaggle of other companies have embraced Cardboard as a way to get their message out as an immersive storytelling tool
Google Cardboard is catching on rather quickly and gaining traction with support from such heavy hitters as ABC News, New York Times, and Verizon. Even the Space Needle in Seattle sees Cardboard as a way to jettison its 1960s persona and encourage people to have a Space Needle VR experience.
Yale University used a dozen Oculus Rift headsets on campus to provide prospec-
tive students a virtual tour of the university. Next year (2016) they are planning to mail out Cardboard headsets with assembly instructions and a link to the location of the files to view. This allows anyone with a smartphone to view the virtual tour on a Yale branded viewer.
Google owned YouTube announced that it would support VR video. Additionally it will make every one of its existing video
NEW YORK TIMES
If you subscribe to the print edition of the New York Times, you will receive this Google Cardboard.
ABC NEWS VR
A snapshot from the ABC News website advertising the potential of Virtual Reality storytelling.
viewable through a VR headset. Google has been creating its own content to be used in Google Cardboard and is providing the specification and software through Jump. Jump is a platform that uses 16 specifically oriented GoPro Cameras to capture these immersive scenes and the software stitches the content together into a visual surround experience. As the technology matures, the cost of creating engaging immersive content
may soon become affordable. Currently Jump is one of the most cost effective solutions on the market. Or you could go with a Nokia OZO Virtual Reality camera for $60,000.
The New York Times has made a commitment to create 100 VR stories using New York Times branded viewers.
ABC News VR intends to bring virtual reality storytelling to the news division and beyond.
ABC News is creating VR news stories that utilize Google Cardboard. Their first
immersive story, is a 360 degree virtual reality experience that transports viewers to the streets of Damascus. The site is www.abcnews.com/vr and explains the process to download the application and view the inaugural story. ABC News VR intends to bring virtual reality storytelling to the news division and beyond. “Our inaugural project is a special one, an immersive experience captured while in Syria,” announced ABC News President James Goldston, “from the Damascus Citadel and Souk to the Umayyad Mosque and the National Museum, Alex [Marquardt] transports viewers into the story, providing a depth of reporting — and a personal guide — unlike anything we’ve done before”.
So as not to be outdone, The New York Times announced a virtual reality project
in collaboration with Google, which will include the distribution of more than a million cardboard VR viewers, one for every print subscriber. The New York Times has made a commitment to create 100 VR stories using New York Times branded viewers. Its inaugural venture is a VR story called “The Displaced,” about children uprooted by war. Dean Baquet, the executive editor of The Times, said the magazine had “created the first critical, serious piece of journalism using virtual reality, to shed light on one of the most dire humanitarian crises of our lifetime.” Jake Silverstein, the magazine’s editor, explained, “The power of VR is that it gives the viewer a unique sense of empathic connection to people and events.” It has huge potential, he said, to help bring subscribers news and stories from the most inaccessible places.
ABC NEWS VR
NEW YORK TIMES
Augmented Reality (AR) an exploding technology, is gaining converts quickly with its ability to superimpose content over a real environment. Microsoft has added an entirely new application category, Microsoft Holographic, to the Windows 10 operating system. It superimposes holograms onto the real world environment.
Augmented Reality is creating solutions that have significant potential for education as well as business and industry. Microsoft launched Windows 10 on July 29, 2015 and one of the applications that is creating significant fanfare, is Holodeck. It will require HoloLens, a headset computer and become available to developers early in 2016. It will have an estimated cost $3,000 and should ship in the first quarter of 2016. The HoloLens was a hit at the launch and like Kinect technology for the Microsoft’s Xbox gaming console, has the potential to be a disruptive technology. HoloLens, is a sleek, flashy headset with transparent lenses. The transparent lens allows users to still see the world around, but suddenly that world is transformed — with 3D objects floating in mid-air, virtual screens on the wall and your living room covered in virtual characters running amok. Unlike VR, where the user is encased in an enclosed environment, the transparent HoloLens allows content to be superimposed over the real world objects. Holo-
Microsoft HoloLens Augmented Reality
Lens maps the environment to know where walls (vertical surfaces) and tables (horizontal surfaces) are located. This invisible map allows the user to “attach” items to walls and tables.
Microsoft is not trying to transport you to a different world, “but rather bring the wonders of a computer directly to the one you’re living in. Microsoft is overlaying images and objects onto our living rooms. As a HoloLens wearer, you’ll still see the real world in front of you. You can walk around and talk to others without worrying about bumping into walls. The goggles will track your movements, watch your gaze and transform what you see by blasting light at your eyes (it doesn’t hurt). Because the device tracks where you are, you can use hand gestures — right now it’s only a midair click by raising and lowering your finger — to interact with the 3D images.”
These images are opaque and superimposed in front of or on top of the mapped version of the real world. So, in the case of one demo, a designer is creating a new gas tank and fairing for a motorcycle. The design appears on top of the real-world motorcycle frame such that the eye can’t tell the difference between the real motorcycle and the holographic design elements. The view through the HoloLens allows the designer to perceive that they are building directly on the real world motorcycle frame.
Microsoft has partnered with several major corporations to utilize 3D design tools to natively create architectural, mechanical, medical, and entertainment models. Microsoft believes that superimposing digital data on top of real world content will be a game changer in terms of creating visual representations of completed products, simulations that include
MECHANICAL INSTRUCTIONAL MEDICAL CARS AND MOTORCYCLES
Microsoft HoloLens is still being released to developers, but major corporations in a cross-section of fields are partnering with Microsoft because they see the potential in their industries.
real world content, and games that appear to exist in the room where the game is being played.
A second Microsoft demonstration superimposes graphics and instruction in a real world environment. In this case demonstrating how to repair a clogged kitchen sink drain. The view through the HoloLens displays graphical instructions for a user to remove the p-trap to eliminate the clog. The instructions appear directly on top of the real world drain in the users home, showing the direction
to unscrew the p-trap fittings. Similarly Clackamas Community College in Oregon City Oregon, just won one of five Microsoft HoloLens academic research grants of $100,00 and two HoloLens headsets. The college will use the HoloLens technology to develop a trade-based curriculum for Clackamas students, focusing on the automotive program.
Yet another demonstration video shows how HoloLens can utilize a digital augmentation to a Minecraft build. The design appears to be sit-
ting on top of a coffee table in a living room. Imagine how this will help in architectural design. The image could easily be a 3D architectural model on a conference room table. The ability to see a building design as a hologram superimposed over the real world environment is also a possibility. This technology will allow individuals that don’t have well-honed visualization skills the ability to see the finished product before the start of construction.
Augmented Reality
Beyond the HoloLens that Microsoft is engineering, other applications are transforming business Imagine if you could select a piece of furniture from a furniture store and see a life size version, in your choice of colors, in your room before you even left your home.
Beyond the need for expensive headsets and displays, there is a new wave of augmented reality that simply needs a smartphone or iPad and something called a marker. A marker is usually a sheet of paper, business card or catalog page that has a unique set of graphics. It is similar in function to a QR code. The marker must be unique so that the correct model associated with that marker displays through the phone or iPad. The possibilities are amazing. IKEA uses this technology with their print catalog. IKEA explains that, “by scanning selected pages in the printed IKEA catalog or accessing the pages in
the digital publications you can view images, films and 360° room sets, and get to know the stories behind the products. You can also place selected furniture in your own room with the help of 3D and Augmented Reality!”
The procedure is to put the marker, or in this instance the catalog page on the floor where you want to place the furniture. Load the application and view the marker on the phone using the camera. The application interprets the marker. Looking through the screen displays a full-size piece of furniture right in the
room. The camera feature allows a photograph to be taken with the furniture in place. If there are color options, for example, you can slide your finger across the screen and switch the display of color options. By sliding or twisting your fingers on the screen you can manipulate the furniture piece. Sliding two fingers across the screen moves the furniture piece in the room and twisting two fingers on the screen rotates the item. In this way you can “move” the furniture into place in your room to get a sense of size. IKEA has found that 14 percent of its customers end up taking home furniture, which
turns out to be the wrong size for its intended location.
Are you thinking about buying a new large screen TV? Do you have any idea how big a 75 inch television would look in your den? Sharp and Panasonic can help. They each have an App that will allow you to see how massive that television would look. For Panasonic, it’s called the VIERA AR Setup Simulator and is free to download from the App Store. All you have to do is to tape the marker to the wall where you are contemplating mounting a television and use the App to see a full size version of the flat screen on the wall in
IKEA PLAY
The IKEA print catalog has a number of furniture items you can try in your living room before setting foot in an IKEA store.
that location. Most of these AR Apps let you take a picture of the space including the television and email it to friends.
Augment has been working on these Augmented Reality functions and has already implemented several noteworthy solutions for businesses. Their website uses a “success story” from Coca Cola. The scene is a small business where they are attempting to place a Coca Cola branded cooler and use the Augment App on an iPad to see how much space the cooler really takes up in the store.
Augment has been education friendly and educators are able to request a 100 model license for free. I was able to create a model, add color and texture, upload it, create my own custom marker/ tracker and associate the tracker with a model and have people view a 3D model
PLACING THE COKE COOLER
This photo from a demo places a virtual Coca Cola branded cooler in a deli. The left image shows the real environment and the image on the right shows the same view through the application on an iPad.
PANASONIC APP
View a big screen TV in your home before you make the purchase.
of the Virtual Education logo in the palm of my hand. I built a marker and printed it on the back of a business card. I put the card in my hand and had guests focus on the card with the Augment App and they could see the logo pop right on top of the palm of my hand. If I turned the card in my hand, the 3D logo rotated. I could still have the person with the App twist their fingers on the screen to rotate the model I was holding in my hand.
Avon High School teacher Justin Schumacher created an account and uploads student models they can show to friends.
In Conclusion
It turns out that the frog in boiling water story isn’t true. Will we be able to say the same about education in the dramatically changing world we thrust our graduates into?
The elimination of jobs because of automation is a trajectory we are already on. The Gartner Group claims software and robots will replace one in three jobs by 2025. “New digital businesses require less labor; machines will make sense of data faster than humans can,” claims Gartner research director Peter Sondergaard. This time around the jobs that will become extinct will include many highskilled jobs.
This should be a wake-up call for education. The discussions about training students for jobs that don’t currently exist doesn’t usually consider that many of these new jobs would be for far fewer positions or how many existing jobs will become extinct. Teaching students in the same way we have will make it exceedingly difficult for graduates to enter college or the workforce. Independent of transforming education, the future is likely to eliminate a significant number
of summer jobs that currently allow high school students to learn the basic values of the workplace. It is time to look at what is truly happening in the 21st century and abandon the perspective of what schools needed to teach that was formulated in the 1990s. The 21st century is not evolving in the same way we envisioned. If we do not seriously rethink what and how we teach, our students will be ill prepared for the future they will inherit.
HOTEL RECEPTIONIST
This Japanese Robot “works” as a receptionist in a hotel.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
The first commercial switchboard was installed on January 28, 1878 in Hew Haven Connecticut. The phones didn’t have dials or buttons. To call a number required a phone and an operator to connect to the other party. Initially attached to a wall, it required the caller to go to the location of the phone to initiate a call. Picking up the handset to hear and rotating the
crank to get the operator initiated the process. Speaking into the microphone that was still attached to the wall phone gave the operator the information she needed to make the call.
Later the caller could use a dial telephone that would input the individual digits to dial the number without the assistance of the operator.
Today one could say we are returning to the old concept of the telephone operator. Dialing a number no longer requires the input of individual digits
to dial a phone number. Today’s operators have names like Alexa (Amazon), Cortana (Microsoft) Siri (Apple), and Google Now (Google). These are pretty universal voice assistants. But there are a number of other “devices” that have voice recognition. Not only can I speak to my television to search for a show, I can have it display a website. In terms of telephone operator, I would have to say one of my favorite “operators” would have to be a Corvette. Just push a button on the steering wheel and say, “phone Five Guys.”
2025
Software and robots will replace one in three jobs by 2015.
The Gartner Group claims software and robots will replace one in three jobs by 2025, claims research director
Peter Sondergaard.
Sleek new switchboard of the time
Thank you to Edovation for allowing this mock-up to be uploaded and available free for anyone to critique
This magazine mock-up was created in partial fulfillment of the requirements for an independent study course. This is Central Connecticut State University course. It has been uploaded to the Edovation site at ISSUU.com and is available for the benefit of those interested in Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and the encroachment of robots into the workplace. The premise is that we need to adjust instruction in schools to account for the changes in the workplace. These changes will lead to loss of both blue collar and white collar jobs.
Beware, the silicon collar workers are knocking at the door.